


Therapy

by CopperCrane2



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bodily Functions, BuckyNat Mini-Bang, BuckyNat Mini-Bang 2017, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Other, Past Bucky Barnes/Natasha Romanov, Past James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov - Freeform, Past UST James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Potential James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-10 17:12:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10442952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCrane2/pseuds/CopperCrane2
Summary: As part of his treatment in Wakanda, Bucky undergoes psychotherapy sessions. While trying to unravel the Winter Soldier, he begins to explore a memory of a mysterious woman he knew in the late 1950s.Post CACW, but before the mid-credits scene. Canon compliant.Pre-warning, Natasha is not directly featured in this fic, but is seen through memory flashbacks.This is much more a character study of Bucky and his significant relationships, with his and Natasha's being one he just hasn't quite figured out yet.I was going to add an epilogue which consolidated the whole memory into its own chapter, but I ran out of time (my bad). I will definitely add it later, but for now the fic works without it.Thank you to my amazing artist, Squidfeathers!!!





	1. Getting To Know You, Bucky

**Author's Note:**

> Oh my gosh, the artist who was kind and crazy enough to collaborate with me was AMAZING (Squidfeathers, you're awesome!), and it goes without saying that the art is seriously AWESOME and more than I could have ever hoped for. 
> 
> I love it so much (did I mention it's amazing?!) It's all bleak and pretty and cool and intense and angsty and spy-like and I could literally just go on and on and on about it. 
> 
> She's so talented, guys, just check out her other work: https://squidfeathersart-blog.tumblr.com
> 
> SO SO SO GOOOOOOOD.

 

Wakanda was stunning, especially within the building’s particularly isolated location.  The architects of the research facility had taken full advantage of its surrounding beauty by replacing the outer walls with one-way glass, immersing them in the fierce vibrancy of the jungle without the practical inconvenience of having to actually live in it. They refused to give him specific details on their exact location, other than they were someway south of Bernin Azzaria. The information was enough to at least give him a likely location and he guessed they  were close to the north eastern border of Azania. He’d never been given a reason to actually venture into Wakanda itself before, but there _were_ vague memories of assassinating a Azanian Minister of Justice at some point before cell phones and the internet had become common use.

_So much death..._

From his seat by the glass wall in his psychotherapist's office, he could stare out into the wilderness - safe and comfortable within a perfectly temperature-regulated room - and recall what terrible havoc he’d wrought onto the world, worse than any creature born in the ferocity of a jungle could have ever inflicted. His living quarters were more than adequate for him: state-of-the-art and clinically clean but with every effort made to ensure that it didn’t feel like he was living in a secret research hospital. They’d even asked him what kind of mattress he’d prefer to sleep on. He hadn't even known that was a thing... and he certainly couldn't remember when he'd last had so much _choice_ \- he doubted he'd ever known such effort being made to accommodate his needs. It was nice, an easy place to relax in; but even so, sitting as he was - vulnerable, open, _literally_ unarmed - with a lady he knew almost nothing about analysing his every move and comment, he should have felt extremely exposed, he should have been cagey. His training _should_ have kicked in, clammed him up, stopped him from unravelling the Winter Soldier.

But it hadn’t. It barely put up a fight.

If he really thought about it (as he was currently doing) it made sense as to why it hadn’t. Considering recent events and (as his psychotherapist had explained to him) his decades of conditioning to accept his lack of autonomy and control over his own agency, the simple truth of the matter was Bucky had no problem letting others handle his physical and mental state, dictating to him what his mind and body could take.

He stopped himself from thinking that way. It was unfair. This was far from being the same situation as when he'd been HYDRA’s prized _Asset_. Here they were trying to help him: Steve was trying; T’Challa was trying; his psychotherapist was trying, _very hard_ , it seemed. He appreciated that - whether he _deserved_ it was another matter - but he wasn’t ungrateful, so he was trying, too.

“You seem a little distant today.”

He acknowledged the comment with a vague “Mmm…”

“Are you alright, Bucky?”

“I'm fine,” he said softly. A reflex. Tearing his eyes away from the waterfall in the distance, he met the dark ones of the woman sitting opposite him and offered her a mildly sheepish apology. “Sorry, force of habit.”

“You don’t have to apologise over something like that.” She gave him a small nod of reassurance and jotted something quickly into her notepad. “Did you often hide how you were truly feeling from your captors?”

 _‘Captors’,_ he thought, _still feels strange calling them that._ “Yes and no,” he answered with a frown. “Anything that wasn’t relevant didn’t matter to them. They needed me to be entirely open and honest for things like planning and assessments, closings reports, body repairs and,” he hesitated, “behavioural adjustments.”

“Are you talking about when they would torture you into suppressing your short term memories?”

He let out a long breath through his nose, his chest rising and falling visibly with the action. “Yes,” he said, “but everything else - the thoughts I would sometimes have which would break through the conditioning? I always kept those to myself.”

“A form of rebellion?”

“No.” He shook his head slowly, his mouth quirked in grim amusement at her optimism. “That wasn’t important to me. They had me convinced all that mattered was the mission, the cause. Those were the only things I was supposed to think about.”

“And so you pushed any lingering memories or wayward thoughts aside to focus on the tasks they set you.”

“Yes,” he confirmed. “I suppose it was out of self-preservation, too. If they became too much of a distraction I would become less effective, and from their point of view, the easiest solution for that problem was to wipe me.”

“Torture you,” she corrected mildly.

He shifted visibly in his seat. “Yes.”

She eyed him carefully before she spoke again. “Does it make you uncomfortable when I say that?” she questioned, “when I use that word?”

“Yes.” He wondered if she grasped the complexity of his simple answer, and if she did, whether it made her afraid.

“I can understand why it might,” she said in consolation. “It’s not easy to label it in such terms, Bucky, but that _is_ what they did to you.”

“It’s also what I did,” he admitted, testing the waters with her, “to others. To a lot of people.”

“I am aware.” She seemed unfazed. “Between the resources of the king and your friend the Black Widow, we’ve successfully collated an extensive histo-”

“I’m sorry,” he interrupted, confused, “the Black Widow?”

“Yes,” she said. “When you first arrived, Natasha Romanoff supplied us with a lot information. Does that surprise you?”

It did, at first - she owed no allegiance to him, after all - but it didn't take him long to figure it out. Of _course she would,_ he thought, _Steve would have asked, and she would have had the right links, too_. _She would have known where to look._ “No,” he said, “it just hadn’t occurred to me that she would. Makes sense, though.”

She made a quick note and went back to their original topic of discussion. “You used to hurt people, you were a killer. And you believe that your being distressed over the fact that you suffered ‘lesser versions’-” she used her fingers as quotation marks- “of the pain you used to inflict on others, is a rather audacious sentiment.” She paused, gauging his reaction. “You feel guilty because you don’t think you deserve to feel bad about being tortured when you yourself did so much worse. Have I summed this up correctly?”

“Yeah,” he smiled a little, “that’s pretty much it.”

She seemed to pick up that it wasn’t everything, though. She sat silent, considering what else he might have been suggesting, very much aware she was being tested by him. “Ah,” she said once she’d figured it out, “you’re wondering if I’m scared of you; if, despite my professional opinions and advice I’m judging you as the monster you believe yourself to be, that secretly I’m terrified.”

He looked up at his therapist, and for the umpteenth time since their sessions began, he assessed her - his conclusion the same as always: clever, astute. Physically weaker than him but outwardly confident, resourceful. He liked her. He was almost afraid to ask. “Are you?”

She thought about her answer carefully. He waited, watching her: dark skinned, with a refined jawline, high cheekbones and full lips, she was undoubtedly beautiful. Today she was wearing a bright yellow dress and sensible, tan-coloured heels. She sat up straight, her legs crossed at the ankles, prim and professional yet approachable, too. Her eyes were only half-framed by her dark-rimmed designer glasses, as she kept them low on her nose ( _for reading_ ) _._ She wore no jewellery on her fingers or wrists or neck, but she sported simple diamond stud earrings and a buzz cut. Easy summation: she liked to look pretty, but she was also practical and very much aware of the potential dangers of this job ( _she’s probably married, likely with kids._ He's sure about it, even though she’s tried to hide anything which could be used to deduce personal information about her - _she has a family to protect_ ). She was slight in build, with a little tone definition to her legs and arms ( _probably does a lot of walking around the city, maybe takes a self-defence class or two. Lifts small weights_ ). Even one-armed, he guessed he’d be able to incapacitate her in less than three seconds, five tops. He’d barely have to think about it.

“Yes, in some ways I am,” she admitted finally. “You’ve suffered a lot of pain, and while experiences in our lives can mold us in ways we sometimes don’t like, you’ve been offered significantly less say in yours than most others. If I had gone through what you did, I’m not sure I would have survived as well as you have, in fact I doubt I would have survived at all. Talking to you, learning about you and what you’ve been through thrusts my own mortality and weaknesses very much in my face.” She noticed that her answer had surprised him. “If, however, you're under the impression I’m worried about you using your skills to hurt or even kill me, then I can assure you, that’s not the case. I’ve worked with a lot of combat specialists, I know what to expect. I’m guessing you’ve already fanned through your expansive repertoire to establish which method would be most effective in dispatching me, and you’ve probably got a solid exit strategy in place.”

He looked down at his knees.

“I don't take it personally. That’s how you’ve been programmed to think, that's not your fault. It’s what makes you so good at what you do, but it doesn’t make you who you are.”

He sighed. “Doesn’t it, though?”

“Do you _want_ it to?”

“No, of course not,” his voice was soft, like he was fighting to accept her logic, “but I can’t change what I am.”

“Are you going to hurt me, Bucky?”

“No,” he repeated. “I don’t do that anymore.”

“Then I’m not afraid.”

He looked up at her, processing, and for a few moments he didn’t say anything.  When he finally did, it was to dismiss the subject completely. “Can we talk about something else?”

“Of course we can.” She readjusted herself in her chair. “What would you like to discuss?”

“Well,” he said, still a little unused to the fact that he could dictate the topic of conversation, “it's just…” he struggled to explain it, “I'm finding I have a lot of free time on my hands.”

She leaned back, pleasantly surprised. “You're bored,” she said.

He smirked, finding the very idea of it funny. “Yeah,” he said. “I suppose I am.”

“Could I ask why you find it so amusing?”

“I haven't been ‘bored’ in a very long time.”

“Really?” she wondered. “I’d have thought your missions would have involved a lot of waiting around.”

“That’s different. You're always pretty focused on the mission itself, running through it over and over again, ensuring all tasks leading up to it are performed correctly, checking everything to make sure it's right,” he tucked a few wayward strands of his dark hair behind his ear, “but if I had enough time for my to mind wander, then I'd usually just let it. Most of the time it wouldn't go very far.”

“Would your memories try to resurface?”

“Not often, or if they did, they were just snippets. Flashes of a past that I didn’t care enough about to delve into. I’d dismiss them because I didn’t want them to affect my performance on the mission… or maybe I was just too scared of the consequences of following those little, white rabbits, especially if they were a potential trigger to something big.”

“Like in Washington?” she asked.

“Yeah, that was a special case, for obvious reasons.”

“Mmm," she said, nodding lightly. “So then, when you were waiting around on your missions, what would you think about?”

He sat back and exhaled a breath, retrieving memories to recall for her. “Safe things - things that hopefully wouldn’t lead to me getting wiped again. If I had a view of a city I'd map it out, or I'd people-watch if they were close enough.”

“Did you ever talk to anyone?”

He shook his head. “If I was with subordinates I wouldn't really engage in conversation - they'd be too afraid to anyway, and I needed to maintain that reputation… but I'd listen: eventually they'd get used to my presence in the background and start talking about their lives.” He smiled wistfully. “If I was in the right kind of location, I’d look up at the stars.”

“That sounds nice.”

“It was, sometimes," he said, agreeing. "Peaceful.”

Her eyes squinted briefly, as if a thought occurred to her. “Did you often feel that way?”

He nodded, realising she’s picked up on the underlying guilt in his voice. “More than I’d like to admit.”

“We’ve discussed this before, Bucky,” she reminded him gently, “just because you weren’t constantly in pain doesn’t negate the fact that you suffered.”

“I know...” he said, “and, I don’t mind saying it here. I _did_ enjoy those moments, they made me feel like there was so much more to the world than what I saw, than what I was doing in it.”

Her eyes softened, he noticed, and she offered him a small smile before she looked down and noted something in her book. “In your files I read that sometimes they’d keep you out of cryo, in between missions.”

“Yeah, if there was another one coming up quickly, or if they needed to do something to me which couldn’t be done while I was in cryo, then they’d wait to put me back.”

“So what did you do during those periods?”

“Spare time was used for body maintenance-” when he noticed that she she didn’t understand he clarified what he meant. “Eating, sleeping, hygiene upkeep, arm repairs, organ checks, muscle maintenance, enhancement experimentation, etcetera, etcetera.”

“That last one…” There was concern in her voice. 

“It wasn’t as bad as it sounded," he reassured her. "After my initial-" he looked down at his missing arm, searching for the right word to use- " _transformation_ , most of the worst experiments were conducted on other people. I was their best active asset, with a kill list and reputation high enough to prove my worth, they didn’t want to risk losing what they already had by experimenting on me too much. They’d usually try a proven formula or two to speed up recovery times, but otherwise they’d restrict any of that stuff to upgrading the arm - making it faster, more durable.”

“I see.” 

“If I’d been in cryo for large chunks of time, they’d also make me go through technical, social and historical awareness upkeep.” The confusion returned to her features. “They were always careful what they would tell me: there’s a lot I still don’t know - and I’m learning now that the facts they did force me to learn were often skewed - but I was expected to be at least marginally aware of major political upheavals and social changes, to avoid them being distractions during missions and to help me blend in,” he explained. “That wasn’t the biggest priority for them, though. The less I interacted with the rest of the world, the better. More important was the need for me to be up-to-date on tech.”

“As in weaponry?”

“As in everything. Weaponry and mission gadgets are a given, but I can’t break into a house to take out a target and steal his hard drive if I don’t even know what an intruder alarm system is.” He laughed. “I’d be a useless assassin if the guy I’m supposed to kill is getting away because I’m just too busy staring in awe at his flat screen or because I can't wrap my head around the fact that his phone fits in his pocket and doesn’t have a cord attached to it.”

“Huh,” she said, “that would have never even occurred to me.”

“Well, at the very least I can say that I wasn’t duped by idiots.”

“A joke,” she noted, pleased, “that’s the first once I've heard from you.”

He ran his only hand over his kneecap. “It feels strange.”

Her head tilted slightly to the left. “Being bored or cracking a joke?”

“The former. The latter’s always come pretty naturally to me.”

She smiled. “That’s not a bad thing. In fact, you're probably going to start experiencing a lot more of that - things that you haven’t felt or done in a long while. You'll get used to it.”

He offered her a brief nod and a non-committal “Yeah,” in response.

“Well, you can’t spend all of your time catching up on world history. If you’re bored, why don’t you try taking up a hobby or two?”

His eyebrows scrunched with incredulity. “A hobby?”

“You _are_ allowed to have those.”

“Like knitting?”

She narrowed her eyes again. “I’m starting to think you have a very dry sense of humour, Bucky.”

He shrugged and gave her a knowing look.

“No, not knitting,” she said, “not unless you’d like to, because it actually does have a strong therapeutic quality to it.”

He pointed at his metal shoulder in response.

“One-handed knitting is entirely possible,” she countered.

 _Likes to knit._  His smile dropped just a little as, out of habit, he analysed what she was saying. _Probably too cautious to have a set in the office in case of it being used as a weapon - doesn’t matter, anyway: ineffective for either offence or defense. Too blunt. Thin and breakable. More effective items are easily within reach._ “I think I’ll take a pass on it, doc, thanks anyway.”

“Well, what did you used to used to do for fun?”

“You mean before the war?”

She nodded.

“Normal things, I suppose. Steve and I were both baseball fans. I was into boxing, we had a great gym a few blocks from my house.” None of these were really suitable options for him now. He thought about it some more as he tapped his fingers on the chair, “I enjoyed science,” he offered, “I liked to learn. New tech was always fascinating to me.” His lips quirked up at the corner. “Not so fascinating anymore, though. It’s more like a necessity.”

She understood his point. “Was there anything else?”

He sat himself up, like he was about to impart some big secret to her. “Going on dates,” he revealed. “A movie or maybe dinner, dancing… and what came after.” He couldn’t help the grin spreading across his face - a little bit of smugness as memories began to float up, but mostly just because he was embarrassed over revealing that sort of thing to someone else. _Fuck it_ , he thought, _she’s my shrink, might as well go all in._ “ _Especially_ what would come after,” he admitted. “I, um… I was good at that.”

She smiled back at him. “Oh, I’m sure you were,” her eyes softened again and he knew what she was about to say next, “but-”

“I know. I’m not going to try to start anything like that.” He scoffed. “Who would, even if I wanted to anyway?”

“That’s being unfair to yourself, Bucky.” She took off her glasses and reached for the case cloth on the coffee table next to her. “Considering the stage we’re at in your treatment, it might be a little soon to try actually getting involved in an intimate relationship,” she said as she wiped the lenses clean, “but it’s not off the table entirely. Social interaction is important, making connections with people is important, and it sounds like you were very much interested in those sorts of things.” She put her glasses back on and scribbled something into her notebook. “After a few more sessions, and hopefully as you begin to build more confidence and esteem within yourself, I don’t see a problem with you actively seeking sexual and romantic intimacy with others. Unfortunately,” she gestured to her door and the wider space that led beyond it, “your circumstances and location do limit your options somewhat, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t talk about the idea or that you can’t be open to it.”

“I’m allowed to have friends, though, right?”

She didn’t miss the slight sourness in his tone. “Of course you are, you can do whatever you want, Bucky,” she reassured him, “that’s your prerogative. I’m not here to stop you, I’m just here to help you help yourself, and to advise you on how I think it’s best to do that.”

“Sorry,” he sighed, “I’m just… I don’t know, frustrated.”

“You don’t have to apologise, I don’t take it personally.” She uncrossed her ankles and flexed one briefly, before recrossing them. His eyes dipped, hooked in by the slight action, only to have to tear them away when she spoke again. “Are you lonely?” she asked, clearly noticing where his gaze had gone.

His response was delayed by a second as he tried to establish what she’d said while also dampening down his building blush. “Uh, no,” he cleared his throat and repeated his answer, “no. Not with, um, not with Steve around.”

Her reaction was one of mild surprise. “Oh… are you two togeth-”

“No,” he corrected before she had a chance to finish her sentence. Her pen immediately went to paper. “It’s not- I mean, it’s a little complicated, that. When you asked about loneliness, I meant that I was. Of course I was, but I didn’t want to fix that.”

“Why not?”

“Lots of reasons.”

“Not feeling like you could trust anyone?” she prompted.

“That.” He nodded. “ _Definitely_ that. And because they’d be afraid of me if I tried, or I’d end up hurting them.”

She stayed silent, knowing there was more, and waited patiently until he was ready to continue talking.

“And because I needed to figure myself out, first,” he added finally. “I didn’t want to be near other people. No-one would have understood. I barely did.”

“Except for your friend Steve Rogers?” she asked, bringing him back to their original point.

“No. Steve… he’s not like me, he’s-” he shook his head once. “Steve will never be able to understand, and I’m not looking for him to, either,” he said, “just like I’ll never be able to grasp what _he’s_ gone through.”

She nodded quickly while she jotted things down.

“But when I was hiding out, trying to put all the pieces together, he was my anchor. Everything was centred around him. If I was getting lost or drowning in the memories, it was the ones with him that would put everything into context. He…” he sighed, unsure he was adequately conveying what he meant. “Steve’s my best friend. He’s _always_ been my best friend.” Bucky allowed himself a small smile at that. “I’ve been alive for an entire century, I’ve done things, I’ve…” he trailed off, not wanting to relive the detail. “He’s still here,” he said, “he’s still here for me. How can I feel alone?”

She nodded, deciding that explaining the distinction between ‘being alone’ and ‘lonely’ could wait for another day.


	2. Let's Talk About Steve

“May I ask you a direct question, Bucky?”

“Sure, doc.” He was at the tail end of laughter and was in a generally good mood. They’d been talking about his family in Brooklyn, Steve had told him a few days ago that Becca was still alive and had caught him up on the limited amount of research he’d done about her and her family. That had led to a lot of reminiscing about the good times in their past.

He’d been processing it all with the psychotherapist and had just been relating a funny story about the time he and Steve had snuck into a speakeasy as young teenagers. Of course they’d been caught and had almost gotten the snot kicked out of them by the bouncer, only to be saved at the last minute when the bar was raided. Once the cops realised they were kids, they’d alerted Mrs Rogers (who then informed Mrs Barnes) that the boys were waiting to be collected from a holding cell - and then he and Steve had wished the bouncer had dealt with them instead.  

“How do you feel about Steve Rogers?”

“Kinda obvious, isn’t it?”

“Well,” she frowned, thinking, “it seems to be. You’re very open about how influential he is over your life, but in one our previous sessions, when we briefly discussed loneliness, I found your summation of your relationship with him - and how you view yourself within that relationship - to be very interesting, and I would like to explore it further, if you’re comfortable with that.”

He nodded, having figured it would’ve only been a matter of time before she’d put his complex ideas about his relationship with Steve under the spotlight. “I love him,” he said frankly.

She sat back in her chair and made a quick note in her book. “Can I ask in what context?”

He shrugged. “In every sense of the word, really.”

“Romantically?” She looked over her glasses pointedly at him.

He _tsked_. “Maybe once, not now, though. Not anymore.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“We’re not the same people we were before.”

“‘We’?”

He nodded. “Steve, too. He's changed; lost a lot of his optimism, his ambitions are different - it must have been hard for him, coming back to the world in the way he did. He's still just as stubborn, though.”

“Did you ever express your romantic attachment to him?”

“No. There were moments when something could have happened, but didn't. Either it wasn't the right time, or,” he tilted his head left as he thought about it, “I suppose we were just too afraid of what it meant.”

She nodded, indicating that she was listening and should continue, her gaze focused on her trusty notebook.

“I remember this one time… it was the fourth of July,” he did a quick calculation in his head, “it would have been nineteen thirty six because it was Steve’s eighteenth birthday. We went out to celebrate with a few guys, you know, since it’s the first time he's buying a beer legally and all.”

“I thought the drinking age in the US was twenty one.”

He scoffed. “Not in the nineteen thirties wasn’t.”

“Ah,” she said. “So, these other guys you mentioned...”

“Barely remember them. One of them was Polish, maybe? A neighbour, I think. There was an Irish kid who’d just graduated with Steve. He was nice enough.” He thought hard. “There were two or three of his neighbours, actually. Older guys with families who wanted to take out Sarah Rogers’ kid because his dad wasn’t alive to do it,” he said, remembering, “to help her out, you know? Community and all that.”

“Mhmm.”

“But then we went to watch the fireworks and afterwards we walk my sister back home and tuck her into bed, Steve and I climbed onto the roof of my apartment building-”

“His idea or yours?” she asked.

He grinned. “His. And he pulls out this bottle of old scotch from I-don’t-know-where. Says it was his grandfather’s and we drink it down.” He can tell she’s genuinely interested in the story because her pen lays slack in her fingers. “There was this moment,” he said, “I remember it like yesterday, we were just talking all sorts of shit, a couple of young guys, you know? With the dismal world at their feet. And we just… lean in - it felt right,” he smiles softly at the memory, “but before anything happens Steve turns away suddenly and starts puking his guts out.”

“Did you talk about it with him, afterwards?”

He raised an eyebrow. “As close as we were then, it was still the nineteen thirties.”

She nodded, understanding his implication and made a few notes.

“I guess we were… afraid of the idea?” he said, trying to explain, “at least back then  _I_ was. And we were both genuinely interested in women, so I didn't really understand it, I pushed it down, thought it was just me being-” he frowned, unable to put this thoughts properly into words. “I don't know. Maybe if it’d happened now, where a person’s sexuality is better understood…” he shrugged.

“So you would consider yourself to be bisexual?”

“I suppose so.”

She thought about what he'd just said about being afraid in the past. “Are you alright with that idea?”

“It’s who I am.” He smiled. “At the very least, it’s one of the few parts of me that I'm happy to accept… that I'm not ashamed of.”

She wrote that down. “You said that, currently, you’re unwilling to pursue a romantic relationship with Steve Rogers,” she noted, seeking clarification, “so when you say ‘if it happened now’-”

He shook his head, shutting down the possibility. “I meant that even if it's acceptable now, I'm not interested.”

“May I ask why?”

He looked at her long and hard. She knew why. He'd told her earlier - they were both different people - but she'd wanted more of an explanation. _Fine_ , he thought, his mood from earlier thoroughly dampened, _I'll give her one_. “Because I was kidnapped by HYDRA and they tore everything that was good about me to pieces, because he was frozen for over half a century, shattering any possibility of having a decent life for himself. Because I destroy everything that surrounds me, and even though he has to save the whole damn world, he'll throw what little he's built for himself away just to clean up after me-” he set his jaw tight, trying to reign in his emotions. “If we'd just been those two kids from Brooklyn,” he said eventually, “and I didn't have a kill list longer than I am tall, if we weren’t both relics, shells from a long-gone past, then yeah, maybe… maybe we could have been something.”

“That sounds like you have a lot in common," she suggested gently, "wouldn’t you say that you _are_ ‘something’ already?” she asked. “He means enough to you that he broke through over fifty years of brainwashing. And you mean enough to him that he essentially committed treason for you. Isn't that what matters?”

“I was only half the reason for that,” he clarified, defending Steve, “it wouldn’t be right to say what he did in Germany was entirely because of me. He’s loyal. He’ll always have my back, but more than anything he's righteous to a fault. And when it comes to doing the right thing, he’ll never back down.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” she said, “but my point is that you're telling me you're denying yourself a potential romantic attachment because you don't think you're good enough to be with him, yet in the same breath, you're suggesting that you're happy to have an equally intense friendship with him.” She looked at him carefully. “I might be wrong, but that seems a little hypocritical to me - a little like you’re perhaps deliberately denying yourself something you want as a form of punishment.”

“You saying friendship and romance are the same thing?” He frowned at her, confused at to where she was heading. “Why do you care so much if I date Steve or not?”

She responded, seemingly unfazed. “In reality, my question doesn't actually have anything to do with Steve Rogers personally, or whether or not you're dating him. I’m just trying to understand what the barrier is,” she explained. “What is it that makes you think you're worthy of his friendship, but not his love? Especially when it's so clear already that he cares for you more than anyone, when it could be argued quite easily that he also seems to love you.” She adjusted her glasses on her nose. “Why are you afraid of being that intimate with someone? Considering the criticism he’s already faced because of what’s happened recently, are you worried how people would view him if the two of you were together?”

“What, because we’re two guys?” He waived the idea away with his hand, like her statement was ludicrous.

She sat up straight, having realised he was deliberately avoiding her point and disguising it with affrontement. “You know that's not what I was asking.” Her tone of voice had not changed, but she looked at him directly and unflinchingly. “When these sessions began we agreed on absolute openness. If you don't want to talk about this topic anymore, then please remember that you are entirely free to say so. You have complete discretion on what we discuss, but I can't help you if you're not honest with me. I'm not here to judge you, Bucky, my only goal is to help you understand you.”

He sighed and looked out through the glass wall, back to the waterfall in the distance.

She waited for a while, letting him think.

“Yes.”

“‘Yes’ to changing the discussion, or ‘yes’ to my earlier question?”

He looked at her again and placed his hand onto the chair handle, as if he were steeling himself. “To your question.” He took in a breath. “Truth is I don't deserve him. He's lost more than enough because of me, I can't ask him for anything else, it’s not fair to him… and I'm not worth that kind of effort, or the hit his honour would take being with someone like me.” He looked at her carefully. "There's a difference between how people see 'loyalty' and 'love'. They'd forgive him less for things he'd do for the latter one, and I'm certainly not worth all that extra pain."

He’d finally arrived at the route of the current problem. “We’ve talked about this,” she started, less concerned about how highly he viewed Steve Rogers and more keen to address his lack of self-worth.

“I know,” he said, pre-empting her point. “I know what happened to me wasn't my fault. I know that my life hasn't been my own. But it's like I told him - it doesn't matter whose fault it was. It doesn't matter how hard I fought against it - or didn’t. And it certainly doesn't matter that some of them deserved worse than what I did to them,” he breathed in deeply again, fighting the sting in his eyes, “at the end of the day, it was this body that committed decades-worth of murder, that destroyed so many lives, that killed people, _actual,_ real, living people. Good, bad, it doesn't make a damned difference. That's who I am, I can't undo what’s been done, and that cocky kid from Brooklyn who loved his friend is gone. He died on Zola’s operating table and when he did, he didn't have blood on his hands in the way that I do. And neither does Steve.”

“That's a very bleak way of looking at things,” she said carefully, “and like you've already mentioned: Steve isn't the same person from your past, either. How can you judge what he can accept and what he can't?”

“Because it's not about what he can take either, it's about what I can give him.” His shoulders drooped slightly. “And it won’t be very much before it starts to become dishonest - before I'd start having to pretend to be who I'm not, just to please him.”

At that she began writing furiously.

“Steve’s chasing a ghost,” he said flatly. “I don't mind chasing it with him because, at the end of the day, I’ve got to carry around this… this dead guy’s soul, I lived his memories. I used to be him,” he ran his hand along his knee. “I can try and piece together who I was, so I can decide on who I want to be now, but one thing I will never be is the person he would have loved back then in Brooklyn.”

“That doesn't mean he can't love the person you're becoming.”

He laughed. “Knowing Steve, he probably will. But I can’t…” his throat tightened, “as much as I want to be the kind of person that he needs, I just-”

Seeing him flounder, she revealed her assessment of the situation. “If you don’t mind, Bucky, I’d like to sum up what I know so far about what we’re discussing here, just to make sure we’re both on the same page.”

He dropped his head back so that it lay over the top of the chair, relieved at having the pressure to talk taken away from him momentarily. “Sure.”

“Ok, well - and please correct me if I’m getting this wrong -”

He nodded once.

“-you’re under the impression that not only are you unworthy of being loved by _anyone_ , you also believe that the only love you can offer is tainted and thus is harmful to its recipients. You accept your friendship with Steve Rogers because it’s built on a shared past, and you've been trying very hard to remember that past because they were good memories, but more importantly, because they were of a time where you had control over who you were as a person. You’re under no illusion that you can go back to how things once were, nor are you actively seeking to re-become the person you used to be.” She paused briefly and looked up from her notes. “Am I on the right track so far?”

“Yup,” he said, staring up at the ceiling.

“In addition, you have a very high opinion of Steve Rogers,” she flipped back a few pages in her notebook, “you see him as a man far too heavily burdened by his superhuman endeavours and as a result, you feel that the amount of emotional energy you would need to match his requirements as a romantic partner is more than you could currently offer. This is a particularly difficult truth for you to accept since you are inherently protective of him - as you have always been - and because you do love him. You feel like, because you cannot give him what he needs-”

“Deserves,” her corrected, interrupting.

She nodded once and made a note. “Because you cannot give him what he _deserves_ , you feel like you are failing him.  Have I summed this up correctly?”

He lifted his head from the chair and looked at her. “Yeah.”

“What I am trying to establish is the _reason_ why you think you do not have that emotional capacity. Is it simply because your current - entirely healthy and justifiable - need for introspection is taking up all of that energy, or does it have more to do with this deeply ingrained loathing you hold for yourself?”

He let out an amused huff. “Tell me what you really think, doc.”

“Just doing my job.”

He nodded ungrudgingly. “Can it be both?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then it’s both.”

She wrote something into her notebook. “At some point, Bucky, if you really want to be able to accept this new self of yours, then you'll have to do more than just _say_ you know that the things that happened to you are not your fault. You’ll need to genuinely believe that you’re capable and worthy of loving someone and, importantly, of accepting their love.”

“I get what you're saying, doc, I really do, but what _I'm_ saying is that I can't. Especially not if that person is Steve Rogers.”

Her mouth twisted slightly in the corner, “I’m not really suggesting that it _should_ be Steve Rogers. I'm trying to tell you that the ideals which you believe he encapsulates: truth, justice, righteousness, fidelity, goodness, love, they're all things which you can aspire to follow as well. _Being_ someone like that, or wanting to be _with_ someone like that - even if it's not him specifically, per se - is okay.”

He understood what she meant, but he needed to correct her on something very important. “There’s _no one_ like him.”

She folded her hands gently on top of her book. “You're placing him on a very high pedestal. At the end of the day, he is still human.”

He made a face like she’d just stated the obvious. “I know that better than anyone. He’s not perfect, but he's the greatest person I've ever met. Even before the whole 'Captain America' thing.”

“But if everyone thinks of him that way, how can _anyone_ ever deserve Steve Rogers?”

“I don't suppose anyone really can.”

“That doesn’t sound very fair to him.”

“When has life ever been fair?”

She took in a deep breath before she spoke again. “Touché, I suppose,” she conceded and readjusted her glasses. “Alright then, I think we’ve firmly established that Steve Rogers is a special case,” she said, giving up on the subject and meandering the focus back onto Bucky himself, “but that doesn’t negate the point which is being made. It doesn’t mean there aren’t possibilities for you.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Remember a few sessions back when you said that my options were limited because I’m one of the most wanted men in history and because I’m hiding in a research institute in the middle of a jungle?”

A small smile played on her lips. "I didn't quite say it like that, but I take your point." She put her notebook and pen down onto the side table and schooled her features back to being serious. “Please understand, Bucky, I am in no way saying that you need to be in any sort of relationship to be happy, you don’t have to even _want_ a romantic partner, but if your goal is to move forward with your life, the reasons for you not having those things shouldn’t be routed in these feelings of unworthiness and self-hatred; and if you _do_ want those things, then you have to open yourself up to the idea that it’s alright for you to be loved.”

He leaned forward, his gaze becoming playful. “That's a sweet sentiment, and I tell you what, doc,” he said with a smooth grin, “if you find me someone with as much red in their ledger as I have in mine, then I give you full and free permission to set us up on a date.” _Because that’s the only kind of person I’ll deserve. I shouldn’t get the privilege of being loved. What I’ve got now is too much already. If I don't hate myself, then how do all those people I killed get their vengeance?_

She let out a small laugh and nodded, reading his underlying message to drop the subject. The session was almost over, anyway, and they were at an impasse: he didn’t think what she was telling him was ever going to be possible, and for the moment there wasn’t much more she could do to convince him otherwise. It would just take time. “Any special characteristics or features I should be looking out for in particular?” she asked, playing into his joke.

He sat back into the chair, his hand resting on his knee. “Sure,” he said in mock-seriousness. “Kind eyes, sweet smile,” his grin cracked through, “maybe limits their murderous rampages and evil scheming to every other Tuesday.”

She laughed again. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said shaking her head in mild disbelief that she was even having this conversation.

“And I wouldn’t say that bathing in the blood of their innocent victims is a _complete_ deal breaker, but…”

“Alright,” she said acknowledging his point, still smiling, “time's up.”


	3. Dream Girl

Ice. Snow screaming at him everywhere. It's all around him. A blizzard.

Three bodies. Target in the back seat. _Driver_ , he thinks, _take out the driver first._

Minimal visibility.

Aim.

The cold burns. The wind cracks at him like a nine-tailed whip. His eyes tear. She's there. She's ready. Waiting with him.

Rumbling of an approaching car. It's almost here. One presence to his right. She's standing off the road, preparing by the shelter of the trees.

Who is she? _I know her..._

He knows she's there. He can't see her. He can barely see the gun in his hand. His fingers sting from the biting cold. The muscles on the left side of his back, shoulder and chest - the ones attached to his arm - radiate a deep ache throughout his whole body. Typical in the frosty conditions. He doesn't let it affect his performance.

 _But her_ …

No.

Focus.

This is not how it happened. She was never a distraction.

Who _is_ she?

He doesn't have time to figure it out. The car is almost in front of him.

Aim…  _aim_ … _AIM!_

He can't see a thing.

_Fuck it._

Take the shot anyway.

 _Shit_.

Doesn't matter. She’ll fix his mistake. She’ll deal with the rest. She’ll handle it.

 _Target’s in the back._ He rips open the car door. He shoots the cowering shadow in the head. There's blood splatter ( _was there really? He doesn’t remember, but common sense says there was_ ) which sprays his face.

“ _Blood on my uniform._ ”

She's killed the bodyguard. Of course she has. He can't see her. But she's right there.

His heart pounds. She's amazing.

_Who is she?_

Cabin. _To wait out the storm._

_To do so many other things with her._

She smiles. He remembers, it makes his pulse race faster than a kill ever has.

But he doesn't remember what it looks like. He doesn't remember _her_.

Who. Is. She?

“ _Blood on my uniform_.”

He looks down. He’s covered in blood. It's everywhere. It pools at his feet. It soaks him, it pulls him in. It’s not snowing anymore and yet he’s still nearly blind. It's still cold. And he's alone.

But he’s not, really... he's killed so many. He's killed too many to see all their faces.

And she's not there.

He yells, suddenly afraid. He’s screaming and screaming and clawing at the snow. He's trying to stay afloat but he sinks down, he drops like an anchor into a thick, red lake. It fills his lungs, chokes him, drowns him with the metallic tang of blood. He can't escape, the surface gets further and further away, he can't _breathe_. The dead won't let him go.

He wakes up: sweating, gasping, shaking, and he scrambles out of bed.

He rushes to the glossy-white toilet bowl in the spacious, top-of-the-line bathroom, and he throws up his whole damn dinner.


	4. What's Natasha Got To Do With It?

“May I ask _why_ you were in that meeting in the first place?”

He couldn’t help but notice that his psychotherapist looked just a little peeved. “They didn't ask me,” he said, defending Steve and T’Challa. “I kind of invited myself to it. Steve and I were having lunch when the Black Widow came by to collect him. I asked to go along.”

“Oh, Natasha Romanoff is here?” She picked up her phone from the side table and started typing. “Sorry to interrupt the session,” she apologised, “I’m just putting a reminder in my phone to seek her out before she disappears off again.” Seeing his look of curiosity as she placed it back onto its original spot, she clarified. “She gave us the location of an old HYDRA facility which might have temporarily housed you while you were frozen at some point in the nineteen nineties. The documents PRIDE found were of some use to the team here on what cryoprotectants they would coat you with, but there were indications of more files being stored in another location. I wanted to ask her if she had any idea where that would be.”

 _Just how does the Black Widow know so much about me?_ “Shouldn’t your agents be the ones asking her that question?”

“Well, you’re not strictly Wakandan affairs, and the less we snoop around-”

“I get it,” he said, cutting her off (this was his forté, after all), “Wakanda doesn't send out its agents without absolute necessity, and they'll only be despatched on orders from the king, who defers to your judgment on how best to help me.”

“Exactly.”

“That’s a lot of influence over the Black Panther.” He couldn’t stop himself, he was reassessing her. “A lot of trust in you.”

“Yes,” she admitted, knowing what he was doing. “I wouldn’t be here with you, otherwise.”

It clicked. She was royalty, probably family. Maybe a lesser-known cousin, someone not important enough to be sought by the spotlight (especially in reclusive Wakanda), and she was comfortable staying out of it, working with veterans instead. It was the only explanation as to how she had access to so much sensitive information as a mere psychotherapist. She’d known he’d gone to the meeting and she knew what it had been about. Considering the only people present in that room had been Steve, the Black Widow, T’Challa, him and two senior PRIDE agents, his list of her potential informants was easily narrowed down to one: the king himself… and for him to trust her _that_ much? _Yeah,_ he thought, _she’s definitely family._ He looked out through the glass wall. _They’re doing so much for me. This is_ too _much, they lost their king because of the shit that follows me around. Everyone is trying to help ‘Bucky Barnes’ get better, but for what? How the hell have I earned any of this?_

“Penny for your thoughts?”

He turned back to her and dropped his gaze to his knees. “Just wanted you to know I’m grateful for what you’re all trying to do for me.” It was the most he could offer in his current state. It wasn’t nearly enough.

“That’s very kind of you to say. We’re happy to help you, although I do appreciate the fact that you’re acknowledging our efforts,” she said with a small smile, and then tapped her notebook lightly with her pen, “but I’d also still like to know what made you think it was a good idea to go to a meeting about a covert operation.”

“It wasn’t the meeting itself that was the problem,” he tried to explain. “I wasn’t upset about what we were talking about. The prison they’re breaking into isn’t exactly easy, I contributed valuable input.”

She opened her notebook onto a new page. He noticed one of the words she wrote said ‘ _validation_ ’, but then she tilted it back up, out of his eyesight.

 _She’s not wrong, I suppose_. “Look, the planning aspects: entry point analysis, tech requirements, risk assessments, that all felt very natural to me. Familiar. It made me feel…” he figured the word she’d used was the most apt, “validated.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Bucky...”

He shrugged lightly. “Force of habit.”

She nodded, acknowledging his point, and pulled her notebook closer onto her lap. “Fair enough. Please, continue, I sense there’s a ‘but’ coming considering the reason why we’re having this discussion in the first place.”

His eyes shifted slightly before refocusing back to hers. “Steve and… Black Widow,” he said, hesitating, “they're going alone. No other back up.”

“I see.” Her eyes narrowed briefly in thought. “It's ok to worry for him, and to miss him when he goes.” She jotted something quickly and then looked up at him. “How do you feel about not going yourself?”

“Left out.”

“Hmm.” She wrote something else down. “Did you want to go, too?”

“No.” He shifted his foot before moving it back to its original position. “I know I can't.”

He was agitated, she could see it easily. “Knowing you can't go is different from not wanting to.”

“I know, but… that's not what made me feel off, I mean, it did bother me a _little_ , but I was expecting that.” He sat up and leaned his elbow onto the chair arm. “It wasn't about the mission. Either one of them could handle it on their own, it's dangerous, but they're the best and with one backing up the other they'll be fine.”

“Mhmm.” She waited for him to get to his point in his own time.

“They were… they're happy to go together,” he said, trying to avoid sounding petty. “It- it was _how_ Steve was talking to Black Widow.”

She had not quite expected that. “How was he talking to her?” she asked, curious.

“Intimate, open, like… like they’ve slept together or something.” He sat back, regretting his comment immediately. “I’m sorry, that actually sounded much worse than I feel about it.”  

She made a note of his comment and his immediate follow up reaction. “And how _do_ you feel about the idea of them together?”  

“As a couple?” He frowned. “They’re not dating.”

“That’s not the question I was asking.” He was avoiding again.

“How would I feel if they were lovers?”

She nodded. “Or even just very close friends.”

His shoulders sagged as he looked down to his lap. “Resentful,” he admitted eventually, “and then guilty for feeling that way.”

“You consider yourself his best friend,” she explained, “you admit that you love him, it wouldn’t be unexpected to feel something like that when he’s being intimate with someone else.”

He shook his head. “I’ve seen him be intimate with other people before, trusting them, caring about them. He was in love with a woman once, you know.” He thought about how Steve had acted around Peggy Carter, what a smitten goofball he'd been and it made him smile. “He’s got a thing for a girl now, kind of. That wasn’t what was odd. I don’t get upset when people recognise how great Steve is, even… before the war, it never bothered me. I just want to see him happy. I don’t care who it’s with.”

“As long as it’s not with you.”

“Exactly.”

“You sound like you’re trying very hard to convince yourself of that.”

He gave her a warning look.

“Ok, point noted,” she said, equally unwilling to delve back into that topic, “I believe you, we’ll move on.” She thought about what he'd said. “You stated that hearing them speak to each other so intimately and openly made you feel ‘off’ and ‘left out’. You used the word ‘resentful’ just now. Can you tell me a little more?”

“I suppose I was envious of the fact he could feel so… unburdened around her. She teased him, he gave as good as he got. It was all pretty mild stuff, but they both were smiling about it. She genuinely likes him, she trusts him absolutely. It's an easy read.”

“Bucky, to me it really does sound as if you’re a little uncomfortable with the fact that someone is so close to Steve.”

He dismissed the idea. “It’s definitely not, doc, I’m not covering this up. I’m not in denial, I promise. Honesty in the session, remember?”

“Ok,” she said, deciding to trust his word, “so what _do_ you think it is?”

“I’m not sure.”

She thought of one possible option. “Did you perhaps feel excluded by their camaraderie?”

“No…” he said first, and then thought better of it. “Maybe, I'm not sure.”

She nodded and made a note. “Did they involve you a lot in their discussions?”

“Steve did,” he acknowledged, “but Black Widow and I never spoke to each other directly. She’d just listen, analysing what was being said, planning what would probably happen next. But that’s not unusual, not for someone like her, anyway.”

She frowned. “What do you mean ‘someone like her’?”

“She’s like me. Just like me.”

“And how do you know that?”

He smiled grimly. “We’re both Soviet-made.”

That got her curious. “Did you know her at all during your time with your HYDRA captors?”

He shook his head. “No. We never-” he stopped, remembering. “Oh.”

“Oh?” She repeated, seeking an explanation.

“I did meet her, once, very briefly in Odessa." He looked down at his lap. "I shot through her to get at my target.”

“Oh.”

Recalling that one memory opened up another. “And once more, during the incident in Washington, we… encountered each other.” At her raised eyebrow he clarified, “I shot her again,” he said, “through the shoulder.”  

“Ah.”

He nodded his head, as if things now made more sense. “Which is probably _why_ she hasn’t said a word to me in the two brief times I’ve seen her here in Wakanda, and most likely why she kept throwing me looks throughout the whole meeting this afternoon.”

“Well, that _would_ be a likely explanation. You could open a dialogue with her,” she suggested, “if successful, it would probably help to alleviate your conscience somewhat. An apology could go a long way.”

“I shot her, doc. Twice. I don't think ‘I'm sorry’ is really going to cut it.”

“Eh,” she shrugged, knowing he had a good point, “maybe not, but you never know until you try.”

He let out a small laugh, and then turned serious again. “She doesn’t trust me. That’s as plain as day.”

“And how does that make you feel,” she asked, her eyes turning soft again, “when people don’t trust you?”

“With people? Lonely, disheartened, but I understand it, and it’s smart of them not to.” His mind seemed to dwell on that.

She noted his turn of phrase. “And her?”

His gaze had drifted over to the glass wall again. “Hmm?”

“How did it make you feel, to see that _she_ doesn't trust you.”

“I shouldn't be surprised,” he swallowed. “I shouldn’t have thought she would have, she's a spy by nature. And considering everything, with me, it’s to be expected. She’s probably got her own demons to fight, too.”

She picked up that there was more he wanted to say. “Is there another ‘but’ coming?” she prompted.

“It stings,” he admitted. “It hurts like hell.”

 _That_ was an interesting point. “Why do you think the idea of Natasha Romanoff not trusting you affects you so negatively?”

“I don’t know,” he hesitated, “maybe I just expected her to understand.” He dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “She trusts Steve, though. And that’s good. It makes sense. She probably loves Steve, too. I don’t blame her. The idea of it makes me happy.” He noticed that she didn’t seem entirely convinced. “I’m happy if Steve gets to be happy. He deserves somebody good.”

She locked onto his last point. “When you decide on what makes a person good and what doesn’t, what kind of yardstick do you use?”

He smirked. “Steve himself.” _Of course it is._

“That’s a rather high bar, wouldn’t you say?”

“He’s at the top end of the scale,” he half-joked. “You kind of aim to be like him, but you don’t really expect to actually reach that target.”

She looked at him, analysing. “So what about the Black Widow, then? Is Natasha Romanoff good, according to the standards Steve sets?”

He looked out into the Wakandan wilderness again. “I don’t know.”

“And what about you, Bucky?” she asked, “where exactly do you place yourself on that scale?”

He didn’t reply.


	5. Dream Lover

There’s music in the background. He knew there would be because he’s sure he’s the one that put the record on, but he’s otherwise occupied, and from the high-pitched gasp she’s just uttered, he needs to stay on task or he’ll have to build her up all over again (not that he minds, but he’s close, too, and he likes the idea of them reaching their… _euphoric peaks_ together), so the music stays in the background and he doesn’t think about it anymore. Instead he shifts all his focus onto her.

Her lips are soft, her body is warm and he doesn’t think the world could ever offer him anything  better than what he has now. He can feel her hands, strong and slim as they glide along his torso. He can smell her skin, the scent blending with his own into a heady musk of sex. He knows what she tastes like. It’s all so achingly familiar and yet so, so very far away from him.

He whispers things to her, and she’s vocal, oh so _very_ vocal , about what she wants - that alone is almost enough to drive him to the brink.

In one instance they’re frantic: hard, fast and clumsy in their need for each other. In another they’re slow and soft and wonderfully in rhythm. Sometimes they’re even laughing together, or they’re flushed in the afterglow and it’s perfect.

 _She’s_ perfect.

He says her name, he plays with it on his tongue. He loves the sound of it, but for the life of him he can’t remember what it is. He can’t see her. Afterall, it’s just a dream of a memory from a long time ago.

He has no idea _who_ she is.

For a few seconds it doesn't matter, because there’s a heat that’s building in his gut and his mind begins to race faster than the beat of his heart.

He shuts his eyes, edging toward the precipice, and he knows that she’s coming with him, he can hear it in her voice, feel it in how she’s holding onto him, clinging to him in a way she would never otherwise do. He drops his head into the crook of her neck, desperate to fill his every sense with her as his whole body tenses in nirvanic paralysis.

 _Billie Holiday. Loverboy_ , he remembers suddenly and wakes up.

His pulse is high, and he’s a little out of breath, like he’s been running, but he knows better, even if the dream is fading fast. What grabs his attention more is the sick feeling in his stomach, but the wave of nausea quickly subsides as the memory steals away into oblivion. He tries to recall any details he can, but they’re almost all gone. He shifts in the bed, realises the sheets are sticking to his skin, and finds himself rolling into a cold, wet patch.

 _Jesus,_ he lets out a long, frustrated sigh, pulling away, _it’s like I’m a horny kid all over again._ At the very least, it forces a few tiny moments of the dream to resurface: they were in Russia, that was for certain, and he was in bed with a woman. His eyes widen with hope - from his past experiences with memory retrieval, he knows that once he has a single prompt, he can build on it. He snatches the journal and pen he keeps by his bed, ignoring the mess in the sheets for now, and scribbles down what he can. A soft lamp switches on automatically.

 _Spoke Russian. Soviet Union → pre-cryo freezing. Billie Holiday._ He tries hard, but he forgets which song it is. He’ll Google it later. _She has short nails_ , he writes. _High pitched moan - caught me off guard (why??? Deeper voice usually?) Thought it was hot. I wanted her to enjoy herself. She mattered._ _ ~~She’s on top~~._ _Standing?_ _Kissing our way to the bed (old fur on the bed) She was naked first._ ~~ _I was on top._~~ ~~_She’s on my lap._~~ ~~_I’m down between her legs_~~ _Which one?! (_ _ALL_ _of them?!?!_ ) _I_ _really_ _liked her. I tried hard to impress. Cabin of some kind. Large. Old. Ran her hand through my hair. Ran her hand along arm: she’s affectionate. I was happy. It was cold outside but there was a fire. I built the fire. We were having_ ~~ _sex_~~ _a lot of sex. We had the time for it. Snow outside?? Snowed in?_ His eyes widened. _Blizzard._ He flipped back a several pages and drew an asterisk on the notes about the blood-lake nightmare. Ignoring the more disturbing elements, he focused on the woman and the storm. Scanning through he nodded with certainty. It was the same woman. It might have even been the same memory.

They’d been important to each other.

_Was I in love with her?_

He couldn’t remember a single thing about her.

 ** _WHO IS SHE?_** ****


	6. Memories of a Different Kind of Action

“What was it about?”

He scratched his jaw lightly. “Which one?”

“You’ve been having different ones?”

“Well, the latest have all been related to the same event, the same memory, but at various points.”

She drummed her fingers lightly on the arm of her chair. “And when did this set of nightmares - of this particular memory - start?”

“Beginning of last week.”

“Can you think of anything which might have triggered them?”

He gestured with his hand and a shrug. “We’ve been opening a lot of wounds here, doc.”

“Hmm,” she reached for her notebook and pen from the side table. “Reliving past trauma in dreams isn’t unusual for someone like you, you know that. What was special about these ones?”

“Well,” he shifted in his chair, no longer so relaxed, and then tapped his knee lightly, “the latest one wasn’t a nightmare.”

“Wait, _‘_ was’ or ‘was _not’_?” she asked, making sure she’d heard him correctly.

“Was not.”

She smiled. This was positive news. “So,” she looked up at him, “to clarify, you’ve been having nightmares recently revolving around a certain memory - which is not out of the ordinary for you - but, last night you actually had a _good_ dream.”

“Yes.”

“And this… unsettled you?”

“Yes.”

She took in a deep breath as she considered the implications of what he said. “Remember, Bucky, moments of peace don’t nega-”

“No, doc, uh…” he leaned forward, resting his elbow onto his knee. “That’s… I… it- it wasn’t, uh…”

“How about you tell me what your dream about?” she interrupted, seeing he was struggling to explain.

He was still hesitating. “I don’t know if that would be appropriate. I mean, I don’t know how much I should-”

She had an inkling what it might’ve been. “Bucky, did you have a sex dream?”

His jaw tightened and his eyes shifted downwards.

“Oh,” she said, taken aback, “you actually _did_?” Remembering herself, she cleared her throat quickly and moved on. “I apologise, of course you don’t have to go into specifics about what happened in the dream itself, not unless it’s relevant.”

“Okay.”

She unscrewed her _Mont Blanc._ “Has this happened before?”

He scoffed, shaking his head. “Not that I can remember.”

“We have been talking about love and intimacy in a few of our sessions.” She started writing. “And you have suggested that you’d be willing to begin engaging in sexual intercourse again. This isn’t too unexpected.” She caught his eyes and offered him a smile. “This is a good thing, Bucky.”

“ _Yeah,_ no kidding,” he said as his eyes widened and he nodded at the obviousness of her point. “I know it is, it was _so_ good in fact, I uh,” he gaze dropped down to his lap, and then to his left, before cringingly looking up to meet her eyes again, “I messed up the sheets.”

She wrote that down. _She wrote it down!_ He should've expected that, really, but it didn’t stop him from suddenly wanting to jump into a hole to die of embarrassement. _I can’t believe I just told her that. This is going to be on record somewhere. One day someone is going to read this and see that the Winter Soldier told his poor psychotherapist that he had a wet dream, like he used to have when he was_ twelve. _Jesus, Bucky, what the hell is_ wrong _with you?!_   “Do you… I mean, do you _have_ to take notes?”

She stopped writing and looked up. “Are you uncomfortable with that?”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

She closed her book immediately and re-screwed her pen shut, placing them both on the coffee table. “Then I’ll put it away for now,” she said.

“Could you also scratch off that last part?”

“About the…”

“Yes.”

“Sure,” she said, obliging and gave him a comfortable smile. “And just to reassure you, like I stated at the beginning of our sessions together, these notes are for my own reference only. I will explain to your doctor in discussions later that there has been a change in your physiology, that you have started to respond to sexual stimuli, but I don’t have to go into detail, and he certainly won’t see this book. No one will except for me.”

“No one was supposed to find the Red Book, either.”

His paranoia was justified, she'd give him that. But the rules were always a little different for people in his line of work. “You have my personal guarantee that when I am done with these notes, I will burn them myself. That’s why I only make them in hard copy. No electronic trace. If you like, you can even watch me do it.”

He nodded, grateful for her understanding.

“Now, if we go back to your physical response to your dream, I should point out to you that when men have such reactions, it’s usually because they haven’t engaged in intercourse for some time. It's nothing to be ashamed about, it's entirely natural. It’s why you might’ve had similar events happen to you during puberty,” she explained. “This leads me a question I’d like to ask, if you don’t mind?”

“Sure.”  _Thank God. Please let's move on from this._

“Have you actively engaged in sexual intercourse since you’ve been here?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Even on your own?”

“No.”

“Can you recall when the last time was that you engaged in any sort of sexual activity?”

“When you say ‘any’...”

“Not necessarily ‘traditional sex’-” she used her fingers as quotation marks- “it can include masturbation, you performing oral sex or it being performed on you, sexual touching-”

“Ok, I get it,” he said, stopping her. “I don’t even know why I asked,” _other than for it to be rubbed in my face, I guess_. “There was nothing, nothing at all after they started putting me into cryo.” He sat up suddenly, wetting his bottom lip as his eyebrows scrunched.  

She gave him a moment, recognising that he was trying to remember something.

Eventually he sat back in his chair, sighing with disatisfaction and rubbing at his temples with his hand.

“Bucky?”

“The dream.”

“What about it?”

“That might have been it,” he lowered his hand, “the last time.” He smirked and then looked up at the ceiling. “Holy cow...”  

She searched through her notebook for something. “You stopped any sexual activity after they started to put you into cryo?” she asked while flicking through to the first few pages.

“Yeah,” he said, “they didn’t care before. Sometimes they’d even encourage it, or they’d ban it before missions, you know? To get your aggression up.” He dropped his head back onto the chair top. “All those memories are a little hazy, though. Guess they tried to wipe a lot of that stuff, too.”

She spotted what she was looking for in her notes. “From the records we have, they began cryogenically freezing you sometime in the very late nineteen fifties, possible fifty eight or fifty nine. The earliest report we’ve found of them waking you up was written in…” she scanned the page, “February, nineteen sixty. Does that sound accurate to you?”

“Nineteen fifty nine?” His shoulders shook slightly with laughter. “Well,” he said, highly amused at the sheer length of time it had been. He lifted his head lightly in order to drop it back onto the chair top, “I might not have gotten lucky in over half a goddamn century, but if the dream was anything to go by, at least I went out with a bang, right?” he asked, raising his head properly to look at her.

Her eyes softened in the way they usually did when she was pitying him. “There was good reason for it.”

“You gotta laugh about it, though, doc," he said, mildly exasperated. "I’m a monk without the piety.” He massaged his eye socket with the palm of his hand, trying to dispel the building headache. “That’s what the dream was, I know it. It was the last time.”

“Well, it doesn’t _have_ to be the last time, and, no matter what, it’s a sign that physically and psychologically, you’re recovering. You should be pleased.”

“Oh I am, it’s just, I’ve been so busy getting caught up in my own misery, it didn’t even _occur_ to me that I literally haven’t made love in over _fifty years_.” He looked up at the ceiling again. “Don’t ever tell Steve.”

She knew he was kidding, that he was aware she’d keep everything they said confidential. “My lips are sealed,” she said with a smile.

" _Fifty_ years," he looked at her, becoming more incredulous the longer he dwelt on the idea. "Shit!" he exclaimed, half laughing.  

She thought it cruel to inform him that technically it was closer sixty. "I'm sure you'll get plenty of opportunities to make up for lost time," she offered instead. "Eventually," she added, remembering the realities of his situation. "It's not like you don't have time."

"Doc," he said, "come _on_. That's got to be some kind of record."

"Sex is not necessarily the be all and end all to life, you know. Some people choose to spend their whole lives in celibacy, while others might not even  _have_ sexual urges," she informed him. "The amount of time you've lived without sexual intercourse is not  _that_ unheard of."

"Those people don't have sex _on purpose_. It's not the same thing."

"Isn't it? Before they used to put you into cryostasis you had, what I assume to be, a reasonably healthy sex life. What they did to you altered your physical and mental state, your loss of sex-drive really wasn't your fault."

He didn't know why it was the trigger - it was such a silly thing - but it was enough. He found himself becoming very angry, suddenly, and nothing was funny about it anymore. His smile dropped. "They took _everything_ away from me..." he gritted out, tears pricking at his eyes. He leaned over and pressed his head into his hand. 

She sensed the sudden shift in the atmosphere and remained quiet. 

"My memories, my family, my ability to love..." He was breathing heavily, the ire swelling in his chest. "My whole damn life. They took it away."

"Bucky..."

"They stole mom and Becca from me, they almost took Steve," he looked up, "and they took her, too." He grimaced as an acute - and all too familiar - sense of pain pierced through his skull. “She was important. She changed something.”

“Who?”

“The woman in that dream.” He sighed, his hand going to his temples again. “There’s a big gap in my memory. I don’t remember why they changed tactics and started freezing me.” He looked at her, implicitly asking her if she’d found any information in the files. He took her silence to mean that she hadn’t. “I also don’t remember being put under or waking up for the first time, at all.”

“You think they wiped those memories specifically?”

“More than likely,” he said. “I can’t imagine not putting up a fight at the idea I was going to become a popsicle, especially if I had something to lose.”

She reached for her notebook. “Would you be comfortable if I wrote that down?”

He nodded, giving her permission.

“The cryo stops my aging process while I’m under but the serum in me heavily delays it anyway, so cryo wasn't a necessity for keeping me around, especially since there was so much more they wanted to use me for during the Cold War.” He closed his eyes, trying hard to remember. “They had a lot of plans for me, I remember that much.”

“So you think they started putting you into cryo because they didn’t have a choice?”

“Exactly,” the acid in his stomach turned like the sea in a storm, “I think they lost control of me so they put me on ice.” He took in a deep breath, his headache also starting to become a distraction. “She had something to do with it, I know it.”

“How do you know?”

“I think I was in love with her.”

She raised an eyebrow. “If that was the case, what you say could make sense. Is there anything you can remember about her?”

“Sometimes I’ll see parts of her, her eyes, her shoulder, her lips, hands, feet, her- um…” he stopped himself and decided to move on with his point, knowing she got the gist of what he was saying, “but when I try and put them together, when I try and give it context...” he threw his hand out to illustrate the fact that the memory would vanish. “I recognise this feeling. I had it when I was trying to get back my memories of home. They did this with Steve, erased him, and then anything that had to do with him sort of disappeared along with him.”

“So when they’d torture you, they’d force you to forget people, not events?”

“I suppose they must have, but that’s not how it always worked.”

She shifted forwards in her seat, clearly invested in the conversation. “There were different ways of suppressing your memories?” she asked, picking up the suggestion from what he’d said.

“I don’t remember what they did to me to get rid of Steve, in the same way I don’t remember what they did to get rid of her, whoever she is.” He rubbed his nape in an effort to release the accruing tension. “I remember all the wipes, except for those ones. You forget what they want you to forget, but _how_ they do that, that stays. The few exceptions? Those were always where the deepest holes in my memories were.”

She shook her head, unable to imagine the pain he must have endured during those periods. “Can you give me a second to write some of this down?”

“‘Course.”

She went to her book immediately and began scribbling. “I wonder if it had something to do with long term memories. Short term is easy, there’s a relatively small window bracket,” she mentioned, thinking aloud as she wrote, “but if they’re trying to get rid of things more routed in your psyche, then I suppose it makes sense to erase the person… let the mind get rid of the rest.” When she was done, she looked up at him. “So this woman you might have loved, what else can you recall?”

“She was in the earlier nightmares… I think it was the same woman, I’m almost positive it was.”

“What were those nightmares about?”

“They’d start off with a snow storm, something so heavy I couldn’t see three metres in front of me. I was standing on this isolated road and I’d never see her, but I’d know she was there, waiting to my right. Then I’d mess up somehow,” he ran his fingers across his mouth, “I’d miss the driver, but I’d leave her to finish him off while I went after the real target. I remember how I’d feel watching her work,” he said, “but I don’t actually remember seeing her at all.”

“How did you feel?”

He smiled. “Impressed, maybe a little smitten. It was definitely very sexy.”

“It sounds like she worked with you,” she suggested. “If she was standing off to the side and helping you when you missed, could she have been a senior officer? Or a trainer?”

“Maybe,” he said, not knowing for sure, “but by then I would have been pretty seasoned as an agent. I remember she was from the Soviet Union, probably Russian herself,” he licked his lips, which were starting to become dry, “we spoke Russian in the dream afterwards, when we were in an old building of some kind, maybe even in the nightmare, too. I remember I thought she was beautiful, talented… deadly.”

“So can we say for certain at least that she was a HYDRA agent?”

“No,” he tried to blink away the dizziness settling in. “She wasn’t HYDRA.”

“Hmm…” She consulted her notebook again. “You were loaned out to several government agencies, if she was Russian, if this was the nineteen fifties, could she have been KGB?”

He looked up at her, his blue eyes round, his chest still. “She was KGB,” he breathed.

_“We need to be more careful from now on.” He had his arms around her waist. “No matter what we want, it’s going to become harder to be together. I’m not KGB, you’re their Xxxxx Xxxxx, we can’t-”_

_“Stop, please,” she begged, “not now. We don’t know if we’ll ever get an opportunity to be like this again, where we don’t have to hide and you don’t have to rush out before the morning. Can we not savour the moments we have?”_

_“Xxxxxxx… the things they could do,” he whispered as he lowered his forehead to touch hers, “to you, to me.”_

_“For what? What are we doing that’s so wrong?” They were swaying together to the crooning of an old song, and she was looking up at him with determination in her eyes. “Fuck the KGB and HYDRA, we already give enough to them. They have our loyalty, they have our souls. We can keep our hearts for ourselves.” They’d stopped dancing. “I’ve seen what they’re capable of, we_ are _what they’re capable of, and I’m not afraid.” Her hand reached up touch his cheek, to lift his face so she could look him in the eyes. “I’m not going to lose you.”_

_He pulled her closer and kissed her._

“Shit.” He doubled over in the chair, suddenly sick to his stomach.

“Bucky?” she asked, concerned.

“Wait.” His eyebrows knitted as he tried hard to recall something. “Something’s… _urgh_ , I’ve got to be honest, I’m not feeling so great, doc.”

“What’s wrong?”

“There was an x-ray-”

“An…?”

“The woman…” he tried to explain, his head suddenly pounding like a mallet to his brain, “we were dancing to an x-ray.”

She leaned forward, ready to catch him if he fell forward. “Are we talking about what happened in your dreams now?” she asked, confused.

“Ye- _no_ ,” he said forcefully, trying to get the words out, his vision spinning, “I mean… no, it _was_ a memory, we were holding each other together and the Soviets, they banned-” his mouth watered like he was about to vomit- “music.”

“I want to help Bucky, but I don’t understand.” She stood from the chair and went to her phone. “I’m going to call the doctor.”

“No, don’t.” He waved it off, feeling too sick to explain properly. “The memory, it’s… it’s trying to come through.”

She put the phone back onto the hook, finally understanding. “The brainwashing’s kicked in.”

He nodded once and did his best to hold down the bile.

“Whenever a memory surfaces, your body has been conditioned to make you feel sick, it’s trying to discourage you from remembering.”

“Yes.”

“But I don’t understand what an x-ray has to do with anything.”

“Music… _urgh…_ ” she rushed to his side, squatting next to his seat in case she had to support him upright, “western music was banned. They’d adapt old x-ray film from hospitals into music records.” He placed his hand on her shoulder in order to keep himself balanced.

“Oh,” she said, in an attempt to distract him from the pain, “that’s actually quite creative.”

“Soviets always were.” He smiled grimly. "We were from different agencies. She _was_ KGB…  _Urgh_ … God, this one’s…”

“How can I help?”

“Hand me the garbage can.” His mouth was watering excessively again.

She got up and went behind her desk. “Here,” she said, offering it to him, “but there’s a bathroom right opposite the corridor if you can make it and would prefer some privacy.”

He bolted out, needing no further instructions.

She followed him and waited outside, hearing him wretch through the door he’d just slammed shut. When he’d calmed down she knocked lightly. “Bucky, are you alright?”

There was a pause, and then a weak, “Yeah… I’m ok, doc.”

“Would you like to be helped back to your room? You should probably rest.”

“N- _hurghh._ ” He hurled again. “No,” he repeated once he’d stopped, his voice shaking. “If I go to sleep, the memory slips away. We were hiding our affair-”

She heard him wretch and then spit into the toilet. “ _Urgh,_ I… I have to push through or I’ll lose it again.”

“Alright, then," she said, determined to support him through it, "let’s push. I’ll get my chair and come in.”

“I wouldn’t recommend it," there was a small thud as his head leaned back onto a wall, "it’s not pleasant in here.”

“Okay, then I’ll talk to you from outside here, as long as you don’t mind that our session becomes a little more… exposed.”

He didn’t like that idea at all. “Maybe you should come inside,” he said, reluctantly taking her up on her previous offer. “I’ll… I’ll open the window and keep the stall door closed.”

“Deal.” She was about to walk across to her office when he called after her.

“Could you… uh, could you bring that notebook of yours? I need this stuff written down so that I can read it later. It..." he sighed, "it helps process and cement the information.”

“I can do you one better, I can bring in my recorder and transcribe it.”

“Thanks, doc. I’d appre-” he interrupted himself as his stomach heaved.

She went to fetch her things.  


	7. Visiting Hours

He opened his eyes to the familiar white ceiling of his room, and the _unfamiliar_ soft, rhythmic beating of a heart monitor, which he soon noticed was attached to him. He sat up carefully, more for the need to ensure he balanced himself properly than for anything else and looked down at his arm. Poking out of it was an IV. He tried his best not to roll his eyes at how unnecessary a thing it was. When HYDRA used to wake him from cryo in the old days, they’d basically leave him on the support stand of his cryo chamber until he was safe enough to move and then they’d dump him onto a bunk for twelve hours with nothing but a heavy blanket, a large pot of whatever the kitchens had made, and a jug of ice water for when he woke up. When their base of operations had moved over to the United States, they treated him with a little more scientific care, but the coldness, the lack of humanity, remained.

For anyone who’d gone through that a few times, passing out in his own private bathroom wasn’t exactly a big deal. He also had an extremely speedy recovery time.

He debated pulling out the IV with his teeth, but then he remembered that there was a nurse call-button by his bed. He leaned over to reach for it and as he did, something slipped from his neck and caught his attention.

It would have been difficult to spot ordinarily because it was so thin, light and delicate, but his sheets happened to be white, and the strand happened to be bright red. _The Black Widow was in here,_ he realised. _Checking on me?_ Maybe she’d come with Steve (he'd had no doubt that the latter would've come to see him if he’d heard about what happened). But the last he’d heard, Natasha Romanova was out of the country, gathering the required Raft intel they needed for the last phase of her covert rescue op with Steve.

He lifted the hair between his thumb and forefinger, bringing it closer to his face for inspection. From where it had fallen, he figured that she’d probably been close to the bed, maybe even standing over him. _I wonder if she considered smothering me with a pillow._ He really did need to apologise for having shot her. Twice. (The fact that he even remembered doing it did not make it any better).

He also debated whether, if the opportunity arose, he should ask her if she knew anything about his mysterious lover. The Black Widow programme had become defunct sometime in the sixties and that had been the last he'd heard of it, but when it came to those kinds of facilities, there was no definite way of knowing for sure if it really had been shut down. In its original form, the programme had fallen under the umbrella of the KGB itself and he doubted (even if it went dark) that control over it would have changed. That meant Natasha Romanova had worked in the organisation. It was a long shot, he knew. The KGB was not a small entity (and was now split into several separate organisations, which would make things more complicated now to obtain records), with a _multitude_ of unofficial, secret departments; and Natasha Romanova looked to be no more than in her later twenties or very early thirties. His lover would have either left the agency or died well before this Black Widow would have even been born, let alone made her bones. Still, maybe she’d heard something. Or knew someone who’d heard something: super-spies and their associates were a relatively small community, so it wasn't a complete impossibility. In addition, she’d already provided his doctors with so much information: she was well connected, and she seemed to have substantial knowledge of HYDRA’s operations, including him - one of their best kept secrets. That gave added credence to the fact that she might be of some benefit in finding his mystery woman. Her web of intel was a remarkable achievement. She was… impressive, to say the least.

Maybe if he hadn’t put two bullets in her, they could’ve gotten along, perhaps even learned from each other (he doubted he’d have any particularly useful knowledge to barter with, but he didn’t know her well enough to say for certain. Besides, she was helping him already for some reason, either he _did_ have something she was after, or, as he genuinely believed was more likely to be the case, she was doing this for Steve… which meant that asking for a little more information wouldn’t hurt).

He didn’t allow himself to really believe that she’d actually forgive him… although, as he tossed the strand up lightly, and watched it as it floated gracefully down to the bed, he did hope that that she eventually would. She’d been there for Steve when he hadn’t, just like that guy Sam (he liked Sam, he was fun... shared his brand of humour). And, it seemed, whether it was Steve’s influence or her own, she was there for him, too. For those reasons he already owed her... and then pile on top the fact that he'd shot her a couple of times. He frowned.  _As a spy you'd think she wouldn't take it so personally._ She never spoke to him - even though they'd not really had much of an opportunity, he knew when he was being avoided. Instead, she'd spent all of the little time they'd shared watching and analysing him, never engaging, ready to strike if threatened. And at the same time laughing and joking with Steve like they were best friends. 

He had no idea why that made him feel queasy, why the idea of _her_ being so open with Steve when she was so afraid of _him_ , was so unsettling. But he trusted his gut, and there was _something_... something about her that didn't quite fit.

He didn’t know what she’d done in her past, but as a Black Widow, it couldn’t have been good. She had a reputation that preceded her, a kill-list likely as bloody and brutal as his own (though maybe not quite as long, given she’d have only been in operation for a handful of the years he’d been). He supposed they would have had a lot in common: both of them reaching for that sense of atonement neither of them deserved, knowing they were never going to get it, but selfishly, desperately trying to survive anyway.

 _Natasha Romanova,_ he mused as he picked up her strand of hair again. _Just why do you seem to know so much about me?_

There was a soft knock on the door, followed immediately by a nurse entering. “Oh, Mr Barnes, I didn’t actually think you’d be awake so soon,” he said. “Can I get you anything?”

“Uh, yeah, if you wouldn’t mind, could you get this IV out of my arm?”

“Of course.” He made his way over to the bed and did as he was asked.

“Did any visitors come in here while I was asleep?”

The nurse finished up removing the needle and went into the bathroom to place it into a small medical disposal bin. “No, not in the room. Steve Rogers came by and asked after you, but he was reluctant to wake you up, so he stayed outside. He asked me to let you know that he came to check up on you, though.”

Bucky frowned. “Was he with anyone?”

“No.”

“Did a red haired woman come by?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive,” he grinned, “we don’t get a lot of redheads here, I’d notice.”

 _She’d slipped in._ He’d been joking to himself that she’d tried to smother him, but…

There was a knock on the door which grabbed his attention. “Hey, doc,” he said, giving her a smile when he saw who entered.

“Good morning, Bucky.”

“Time for a session already?” he asked. "At least let me get some breakfast down me first."

She said something to the nurse in Wakandan and he left immediately.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

She gave him a smile in an attempt to ease his anxiety. “May I sit?” She indicated to the desk chair by the window.

“Yeah.” Something was coming, he could feel it, but he was long used to waiting for bad news to hit.

“I think we should take a break from your memory retrieval sessions.”

He sighed with relief. This was about his health, this wasn’t about someone else getting hurt. “I’m fine. I don’t need all of this,” he gestured to the monitoring equipment. “I went through much worse with the last set of memories. It’s only been two days. When I was in Romania, I did this for three weeks straight and I’d had to fight through so many more layers than I do now, so it was harder to do, and the gains were much smaller.”

“Just because you can doesn’t mean you have to. We kept going yesterday until you literally collapsed.” She gave him a look. “And I have learned first hand that Steve Rogers can be quite a stern man.”

He ran his hand through his hair, a little embarrassed at the fact his best friend would have potentially chewed out Wakandan royalty for doing nothing more than helping him. “He’s got a sharp tongue when he wants to use it. He didn’t offend you, did he?” _If he did, I’ll take him down a peg._

“No,” she reassured, “but he was, understandably, quite concerned.”

Of course he was. “Where is he?”

“He and Natasha Romanoff have left on some kind of retrieval mission.”

He didn’t bother trying to hide his disappointment. He’d wanted to talk to the Black Widow before she'd gone, and he would have liked to see Steve off. “When are they back?”

“Steve Rogers should be returning within the week. As for Ms Romanoff, I’m not sure. Interestingly, though, she came to see me and asked for an update on your well-being before she left.”

“She did?” That took him by surprise.

“I didn’t tell her anything of course, I’m not allowed to give her that kind of information without, at the very least, consulting you first about it, but she seemed pleased with that response. I informed her that I would tell you that she asked after you.”

“How did she take that?”

“To be honest, Bucky, I don’t know. I won’t pretend to have the skill set required to accurately analyse the infamous Black Widow within such a short conversation. What I can deduce from it, however, is that she probably will not come back to Wakanda with Steve Rogers and was likely trying to reassure herself that you were being left in safe hands.”

He was hit with another wave of disappointment. “She was part of the KGB, I wanted to ask her if she knew anything.”

“About the lady in your dreams?” She _tsked_ , and frowned lightly. “I wish I had thought to ask her myself, it didn't occur to me that there might have been some kind of link.”

"There's no point worrying about it," he said. “You can make it up to me by giving me the all-clear to get back to what we were doing.” He looked down at himself. “As you can see, I’m fine.”

“Bucky-”

He saw the reluctance on her face. “I promise you, I’m as right as rain, and I’m _so_ close. Once I crack this memory and figure out who that woman was anything else related to her will come flooding back. That could fill a gap which is potentially up to four years long. I just need a little more time. I can do this.”

“Bucky, that’s not why I think we should stop.”

He frowned.

“I have something to tell you. Something which might take priority.”

“What is it?”

“We found out what the chip in your brain does.”

The tone in her voice made his blood run cold. “The one they picked up in the scan I had when I first arrived?”

“The very same.”

“And?”

She took in a breath. “It’s the control mechanism for the robotic state you enter when you’re activated with the trigger words.”

“What?” His heart fell to his stomach.

“As you know, our original theory was that it was just a higher level of brainwashing, but it appears that we were incorrect.” She gave him a quick once-over to ensure he was coping with what he was being told. “At some point, this was implanted into your brain to act as a fail-safe for if and when you got too out of hand.”

He was looking down at his lap, hidden under the white bed sheets. “You mean when they couldn’t wipe me, of if it didn’t work.”

“Yes. According to the file, it’s very effective.”

He smirked. “No shit.”

“But it has disadvantages, too. In exchange for absolute obedience, it takes away much of your ability to critically analyse unexpected situations. When activated, it’s apparently impossible for you to deviate from your initial instructions, even if the targets, missions or environments change.” She uncrossed her ankles and then recrossed them again, clearly unhappy with delivering him such news. “It also doesn’t last very long.”

“I know, and sometimes I can remember what happened.”

“From your explanations and from what we’ve read about what the procedure entails when they wipe you, it seems that they’d activate the chip during the actual wiping session to ensure a more effective means of suppressing your memories.”

He looked up at her, having figured out what she was doing. This was information he already knew. She was stalling. There was something else. “This is all well and good, but can you get it _out_?”

She looked away for a second, and then met his gaze head-on. “No.”

His chest began to sting, the tears welling up as he forgot to breathe. Even without thinking, he knew where he was going to end up. And the idea of it hurt like hell. 

“Not yet, anyway. The way the chip is embedded is awkward, and we don’t know how to go in and get it without causing significantly more brain damage than you’ve already sustained,” she said. “We’re not willing to take the risk, yet, but the team is now entirely focussed on devising a means of doing so.”

He swallowed down the pain. “How long will that take?”

“I don’t know, Bucky. I’m very sorry.”

He sat in silence for a long while, contemplating everything that had happened so far, every moment of progress he’d made.

 _She’s right there, at the tip of my fingers._ He was so close.

But there was only one decision for him to make. One option. Not taking it was selfish, it was putting literally every single person who was helping him, who cared for him in danger. And if something ever happened, Steve would inevitably have to go out and pick up the pieces again. There was no guarantee that things wouldn’t end up worse.

The idea of what he had to do made him sick, but the risk he was to others wasn’t something he could afford. His conscience wouldn’t allow it.

He owed them all more than that.

Besides, going into it on his own volition? Proving to them that he wasn't so afraid of what they'd done to him that he wouldn't do it to himself if it meant keeping those he cared about safe? What better way was there to say a giant " _fuck you"_ to his tormentors. 

“I’m going back into cryo,” he said with finality.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope youenjoyed it. A special thanks goes out to our dear MiniBang co-ordinator:
> 
> THANK YOU FYBN! YOU'VE BEEN SO ACCOMMODATING AND KIND AND UNDERSTANDING! 
> 
> THIS IS AN AWESOME EVENT AND I APPRECIATE IT SO MUCH!


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